HB 12: Giving Individual Police Officers the Ability to Act as Immigration Officials

Impacts and Consequences of Arizona-Spirited Bill

On Public Safety and Security
1. Local governments, especially their law enforcement departments, will be stripped of the
ability to shape the policy they know to be most effective in providing the level of service
local tax payers expect.
In an attempt to create a uniform policy across the state, the consequence of this bill is the
creation of inconsistency within police departments.
2. A law enforcement executive will not be able to determine the safety priories for individual
officers under his/her command.
3. The individual, rogue officer will be given a hall pass to deviate from command structure
priorities.
On Local Tax Payer
4. Jeopardizes the relationship between communities and local law enforcement agencies, and
creates a public safety risk.
a. erodes the hard earned trust that a very large and important sector of our society has
on our police officers, namely Latinos and other ethnic groups;
b. it will call into question the legitimacy of various police actions;
c. deter witnesses and victims of crime from cooperating with the police; and,
d. force jurors to doubt the testimony of police in court.
5. If police officers are distracted by looking for immigrant workers it will potentially increase
response time when a tax payer makes an emergency call.

On Local Governments
6. Local police department will be subjected to potential law suits due to increased risk of
racial profiling
7. This unfunded mandate will use local precious resources to enforce federal immigration
laws, a responsibility of the federal government.
a. Costs are in terms of time and human resources
i. A police officer will spend time looking for immigrant workers rather than
criminals.
ii. Our local jails will see an increase in population and thus will have to spend to
house people while ICE responds.
iii. There are no funds designated for training or continuing education of entire
departments on the technicalities and complexities of current and future federal
immigration law.

www.reformimmigrationfortexas.org